


There are no ghosts

by pene



Category: Chess - Rice/Ulvaeus/Andersson
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 07:02:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pene/pseuds/pene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t know if he will ever be home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are no ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heidi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heidi/gifts).



> So very many thanks to Luna: for cheerleading and smart commentary; and to Jae Gecko: for thoughtfulness, for her time in reading and editing and for sharing her extremely relevant understanding of the 80s and the USSR. Both made this whole thing worlds better.

Anatoly hasn't walked the bright, flat streets of his hometown in nearly fifteen years. Coming back he thought he would feel like a traitor. Instead he feels like a foreigner. 

As a child he knew every crack in the pavement. He knew the number of steps from his front door to the ruins of the cathedral, from the ruins to the machine building institute. He walked them frequently in summer, covering considerable distances as the long evenings cooled. Either they've moved some buildings or his legs are longer. 

He has travelled much of the world now: Western Europe, Asia, the Americas. He’s seen mountains and bright blue seas. He’s visited the kind of places that feature in American travel magazines. But somehow the beauty you encounter as a child never leaves you. So it’s this land and this river and this wide, unobstructed sky that make his heart want to sing about a place he can never leave. 

The landscape is not ostentatious. It’s all tiny detail and hidden potential - a row of perfectly aligned pawns before the start of a game. This is the kind of beauty you have to hold still to see. There’s no difficulty with that. Anatoly’s not running very far these days. 

*

It’s been almost three years since his so-called triumphant return. For the time being he is not sanctioned to travel outside the Soviet Union. 

“For myself, I commend your patriotism, Anatoly Valeryevich” said Molokov, his voice deep and smooth. “However, not everyone sees your recent history quite as I do. We recognize you as a champion and I know you will understand that we are all gratified by your continued presence in our homeland. With Soviet honor at stake there may be certain modest measures…” 

He chose not to think too hard about what measures Molokov would consider modest in keeping him within Russia’s borders. Anatoly has always been aware that this game has rules. However creatively he played, his pieces would only move certain directions. 

For months he stayed in Moscow. He played chess in Pushkinskaya Square near the apartment. He never lacked opponents. 

"You are very clever," noted one old man who greeted him with respect after days watching. "You allow them to feel that they could win. You must be exhausted."

Anatoly bent his head in acknowledgment. It was oddly more wearying to allow someone to take his castle than it was to play another grand master. Kindness is far more complicated than competition.

His family was not easier to deal with. He walked his children to school for several months before his daughter pointed out that they’d been walking themselves to school for two years.

And then there was Russia. Gorbachev made speeches about socialism and democracy. He stood for glasnost and better household appliances. He promised Eastern bloc sovereignty. “We are witnessing most profound social change, not only in the Soviet Union but throughout the world,” he said to the UN. Behind the speeches were whispers that the economy was frighteningly unstable. Soviet authorities had bigger things to worry about than a world-renowned grand master who was also a defector. 

He recognized he was essentially free to move about the country. No one of prominence was paying him any attention. In any case it was long past time to visit his hometown. He bought a train ticket. 

*

Omsk might be in Siberia, but at this time of year it is temperate. The streets are quiet and the sky bright overhead. He can’t imagine Florence here. She’d be too much, perhaps: her slight frame, her quick mind, and that voice that fills her all the way to her toes. There was a time when it felt like she saw inside him, like she knew everything before he even thought to say it. But Florence never knew this side of him. 

Their happy ending was hard won. It was also impossible to hold on to. But even if their love song had lasted, they couldn’t have come here. She’d never really have known Russia. 

Then, Svetlana never visited his hometown either. He asked her to join him this time. 

“Omsk,” she said. She was leaning in the fogged kitchen window. She narrowed her eyes and gestured outside with her cigarette. “You didn’t take me to Lyon but you want to take me to Siberia?” She mostly sounded weary. She had followed him across the world, had brought him home to Moscow, and still he could never be the man she thinks she knows. 

“Do you think- will the children accompany me?” he asked. He was not comfortable with the diffidence in his voice. 

“Ask them yourself. They can answer you. They learned to talk when they were toddlers, Tolya.”

He asked. Of course both children were busy. They had more of a life here than he did. They were polite, though. He thinks it’s possible that they love him. 

When they were babies he patted them in the dark to help them sleep. The rhythm of his hand against their swaddled bottoms was the queen’s pawn game over and over. He gave them bottles of milk in the middle of the night and gazed unseeing at the painted bears and deer on the walls while running through the Alekhine Defense in his head. Their small human bodies kept him warm, first Nika’s and then, two years later, Alyosha’s.

He was fond of those sturdy bodies. He liked being close to them as the clock shifted between two and three in the morning. When he lined up the pieces, he planned to win for them, for Russia and for Nika and Alyosha. Things changed when they started talking. Then the attention they demanded felt inescapable. He’d be interrupted part way through playing out a defense to the Sergievsky opening. “Batya,” they said, “Papa! More milk! Sore toes! Naughty brother!”

The apartment was too small, their voices too loud. Their needs were too close to the surface. 

Anatoly’s brain was made for higher things. Black and white, a chessboard, an opponent and victory. Those were the things that needed his attention. Not the mewling of infant voices. Not shoelaces and spiced biscuits that tasted wrong, not like mama made them. His mental energy was precious. He was doing this for Russia.

Increasingly, he disliked himself around them. His muscles tightened when they appeared. His voice was quick and hotly defensive. “Leave me,” he’d say. “Can’t you ask your mother?” 

“Just shut up,” he said once. Nika’s eyes widened.

“Batya told me to shut up,” she wailed. It was shrill and true. He felt ashamed. Then she turned to him. “You shut up,” she said, her voice wavering. “You shut up forever you stupid man.”

The children grew past that, of course. Their needs were more subtle. When he took the time to notice he was stunned by who they were. Nika played, still plays, basketball. She was beautiful on the court - fierce and muscular. 

“You’re too old to play boys’ sports,” he said, though he wanted to tell her she was incredible. It was pointless. He already knew she would not stop.

Her eyes flashed. “You’re too old to play children’s war games,” she said quickly. He nodded to acknowledge the point. She didn’t see him. 

Alyosha was shorter, finer boned. He was whip smart and sarcastic, most often and rather unfairly to his mother. Sometimes Alyosha’s eyes met Anatoly’s, laughing at his mother and seeking Anatoly’s approval. Anatoly tried not to feel pleased.

They were at the kitchen table. Nika had just finished emoting her way through a rendition of a Beatles song she had copied onto cassette from a classmate. 

“When I was in Bangkok-” Anatoly started. Nika stood. The plates crashed together as she began to clear the table. Alyosha shifted nervously. Anatoly’s victories meant nothing here. He was not a grand master to them. But he was not really a father either. They never really belonged to him.

“It’s not that I don’t want to go to Omsk with you, Batya,” said Alyosha. His kindness hurt more than his sister’s brief, “No, thanks.”

So Anatoly goes home alone.

*

The USSR is changing. Maybe it has changed already and he missed it while he was watching the chessboard, eying his opponents. It’s his beloved Russia, his heart, his moral North. He is in his hometown. And he doesn’t know if he will ever be home again. 

He makes himself slow down as he walks past his old house. For better or for worse, nothing has changed. The house is brick, grayish, almost indistinguishable from the houses on either side. There is a man Anatoly does not recognize sitting in the front, watching him balefully. 

He heads up the street and turns toward the ruins. He used to sit on the ruin walls, lining up his pawns and feeling a child’s general sort of approval toward the people who bombed the brightly colored cathedral which stood there thirty years ago. He considered it important moral ground. After all, socialism is incompatible with religious faith. 

In all likelihood, it had been a beautiful building though. He can imagine it against the sky with its white spires and gold and blue domes. Its destruction was a moral necessity, but Russia did lose this interesting piece of her architectural history. 

He has all the time in the world. He feels more trapped than freed by this circumstance. But it means he can stand and stare. 

“Can I help you?” asks a woman in Russian. She reminds Anatoly of his mother, of course. Every Russian woman over fifty reminds him of his mother and this one has a provincial accent which makes the resemblance more notable. Though his mother looked nothing like this stout creature. 

“Are you lost?” the woman says. 

“No, no,” he assures her. “I was just caught up in a moment of nostalgia, _gaspazhá_. I grew up here.”

She nods, not recognizing him and unimpressed.

“You can’t go back to a place that has already disappeared,” she says. Her padded hip makes contact with his arm as she moves past him. 

*

When his mother died, he was surprised by the potency of his grief. They weren’t close. Of late he hadn’t sought her company. When he returned to Russia, a champion but alone, she seemed more cheered by his misery than his victory. 

Yet now he wants to tell her that he saw the snow cranes migrating up above. He wants to mail her an article about her favorite actress. Somehow he thinks about her far more frequently than he ever did while she was comfortably ensconced in a Moscow apartment, murmuring about how he never called, about his disloyalty.

His mother never met Florence. She never used her name. “You were willing to roll over, to give up your home and your family for that woman,” she said. “You were happy to lose it all.”

It is increasingly clear to him that despite returning he has still lost everything. Florence is gone. He feels unwelcome in his home, feels they would willingly let him go. The glories of Russia are vanishing. 

When Anatoly was a child he was coached by a grand master. The old man studied Anatoly’s game and said, “Do not be fooled into thinking there is right and wrong in chess. Do not look for a moral, Tolya. Black and white are the same. There is only winning and losing.”

So Anatoly relied on his country for morality, on his family for right and wrong. But if chess is all that remains then there is only winning. Anatoly’s skin is tight. He is bored and he is hungry for competition.

*

He visits Molokov.

“To what do I owe this honor, Anatoly Valeryevich?” 

“Comrade Molokov, I wish for you to arrange for me to attend the tournament in Tilburg. It is most highly regarded. If I win, we are both champions and our beautiful country will be greatly revered. If I lose, you have lost nothing.”

“I am afraid, however much I esteem your patriotism, there are questions,” says Molokov. “People do not question your loyalty, of course. They merely do not wish to place undue pressure on a man so recently returned. You will want time with your family.” 

It has been years. “All our great novelists remind us how brief are the stories of the heart,” says Anatoly. “It is there and then it is gone. The Soviet Union is my home.” 

Molokov looks at him tiredly. “Anatoly, as sad as I am to say it, I cannot help you. I do not have the discretion.” 

“Perhaps there is another venerated comrade who does.”

So Anatoly returns daily, then twice daily. He nods respectfully to the guards at the door. He waits patiently at the front desk. He is a constant staunch presence. His persistence meets Molokov’s weariness and ambivalence. Only one of them truly cares about the outcome. 

He is handed the paperwork at an outer desk. There is a note in Molokov’s firm hand. “We anticipate your triumphant return.”

*

Anatoly has been here before, has walked Tilburg streets that look like they were painted for a children’s book. The buildings, with all their pretty windows, sit flush to the footpath. They block his view of the sky. 

The first person Anatoly sees in Tilburg is Freddie Trumper. 

As always, Freddie has that shell of American dollars and modern polish sitting over something quicker and more mobile. But Anatoly has spent countless hours reading this man. He has changed. He bears himself more easily beneath the steel grey suit. The polish sits more loosely on him. 

“Russki,” Freddie says as Anatoly approaches. He eyes Anatoly intently. “How is the motherland treating you?” he asks. 

There is kindness in his eyes. It sits oddly alongside their usual antagonism. 

“It is home,” says Anatoly, though Freddie has spent hours watching his face across a chessboard and must know he is partly lying. Anatoly turns to look about the small assembly gathering for the opening. 

“Uneasy about the tournament?” asks Freddie. “This will be your first run for, what, three years?”

Anatoly doesn’t bother to reply. He looks Freddie up and down openly. “I suspect you might play a better game, now, Trumper,” he says. “You look more at ease with yourself. But if we face each other at the end of the week, I will still win.” 

Freddie grins: half wolf, half child. “It’s good to see you. Let’s get a drink,” he says.

*

They perch on barstools in the almost empty bar. Freddie orders Zhigulevskoye with a smirking sideways glance. In Russia it’s not even considered to be alcohol. Anatoly lets it slide. Freddie lifts his beer and takes a slow mouthful.

“They let you out?” he asks.

Anatoly resents the implication that he is powerless, however much truth there is to it. He is proud. “They like to win.”

“Yes,” says Freddie carefully. “But they’d want to take care with you. You're home, but you are still the prodigal son.”

“I don’t understand the reference,” says Anatoly.

“You left. You skedaddled, and then you came home to them under some pretty significant pressures. Who’s to say you won’t leave them again?”

“I convinced them it was a short-lived madness,” says Anatoly. 

“The madness of love,” says Freddie with a laugh. There’s ridicule, but very little anger there.

“I referenced Dr. Zhivago and Anna Karenina. Clearly they have other things on their minds.”

“And how about Florence?” says Freddie.

Anatoly meets Freddie’s gaze directly. “I do not know,” he says. “I haven’t spoken with her since Bangkok.”

“Do you miss her?” asks Freddie quietly.

There is so much history between them. Anatoly doesn’t know whether to tell the truth, which truth to tell. He tries to throw the question back. “Do you?” 

“No way, man, I asked you first.”

Anatoly nods. The fact is, Freddie never thought he had a right to Anatoly’s fame, to Anatoly’s success. He achieved those things for himself. He might yet win them back. Anatoly says, “She understood chess. She understood me. I miss those things. I- could have given her more.”

“Yeah. I know how that feels. So was it all worth it?”

Anatoly shakes his head. “I can’t answer that. I don’t even know what scale to use.” He wonders when Freddie became so perceptive.

“I miss her too,” says Freddie into the silence. “She was an excellent second. But it’s not about- I don’t miss her in my bed. I wasn’t kind to her. Things have changed for me a fair bit.”

Anatoly suspects he knows what Freddie is talking about. “Men?” he asks.

Freddie’s glance is searching. Then he smiles, quick and wide. “I’m enjoying a lot of things I never considered before,” he says. He sounds relaxed. Heat pools in Anatoly’s belly, unexpected but not unwelcome. “It’s different. I like different.” 

On his third drink, Anatoly meets Freddie’s bright, shifting eyes. He thinks, _Once I despised this man._ He thinks, _I want to touch this man._

Anatoly’s hand is inches from Freddie’s on the bar. He feels the draw of those inches. It’s new - the thought of a man’s skin and muscles and sweat under his fingers, the lure of a body that in some ways mirrors his own. He is unaccustomed to the push and pull of attraction and rivalry. But the things he is accustomed to seem less and less appealing.

The air presses in Anatoly’s chest. His skin feels tight. This might be new but it is also Freddie Trumper, Anatoly’s adversary in more than chess. This is a man Anatoly was willing to dismiss as superficial; as only ever thinking of himself. They have both changed, not only for the better. But Freddie was always long limbed and fiercely beautiful. It is almost a relief to acknowledge that. 

Freddie is watching him. He is at ease, self-possessed. But his eyes are alight with amusement. They darken a fraction on Anatoly’s. “So,” he drawls, “What do we have here?" He glances around the room before placing a discreet hand on Anatoly’s knee. His thumb brushes against the seam of Anatoly’s trousers.

Anatoly refrains from biting his lower lip. He draws on years of training in not giving anything away and lifts his shoulders in a tiny shrug. “Something different,” he offers lightly. 

He is somewhat pleased with himself when Freddie laughs, softly surprised. 

“Okay then. Shall we take this somewhere?” It sounds like a dare.

Anatoly hasn’t been truly challenged in almost three years. He sits still.

“Feeling reckless?” prompts Freddie with a small smile.

“God yes,” mutters Anatoly. 

Freddie laughs out loud. 

*

Anatoly wakes to Freddie’s hotel room. It’s early. Freddie is asleep – rumpled and pliant against Anatoly’s side. Anatoly blinks into the near dark. He feels well-rested.

The night is clear in his mind: Freddie, naked and yet still so astute, his hand tight around Anatoly’s cock. “You say I can’t beat you this week?”

“Not a chance,” on a gasp. 

“Open your eyes, Red. Watch me. If I can’t win this thing I at least deserve to see you come undone.”

A morning newspaper is pushed under the door and Anatoly untangles himself from Freddie and goes to pull it free. He lies on his stomach to read about Lithuanian courts declaring independence from the Soviet Union. It is distressing to be far away when his country is so volatile. In this bed he feels disconnected from home - the sheets are rumpled and his body and mind are quiet. But he is more than aware that once he rejoins the waking world he will feel the distance keenly. This is no game.

“What’s happening in the world, comrade?” says Freddie, hooking his chin over Anatoly’s shoulder. 

Anatoly slides the paper to him; proffers the headline.

“Big deal,” says Freddie. Before Anatoly can be properly annoyed by his flippancy he says. “I meant that seriously.”

“Ah,” says Anatoly. “Right. Big deal. Maybe the beginning of-“

“Yeah.” There’s a silence. The street is waking below them. “Who are you playing this afternoon?” asks Freddie. Anatoly is grateful for the change of subject. 

“Nigel Tait.”

Freddie rolls to his side and faces Anatoly. “Oh. Very British. Keen on the Spanish Defense. I’m meeting Prokofiev.”

“You shouldn’t have any trouble. He doesn’t have much imagination. ”

“And I do?” Freddie is teasing.

“Stop fishing,” Anatoly says. But he smiles. It feels strange, almost foreign, to reach out rest his hand on Freddie’s hip. Anatoly does it anyway.

Freddie closes his eyes. “You’ll be heading back to Russia once I’ve beaten you,” he says.

“Indeed, once I have won I will go home. She needs me.”

“Your wife?” asks Freddie opening one eye. 

“My country.”

Freddie grins. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Anatoly shrugs. Freddie could be right. As a champion Anatoly is a symbol, but as a defector he is hardly a stabilizing force. Anatoly doesn’t know what his country needs. He doesn't even know what will be awaiting him when he returns home. He knows there will always be another tournament. Chess is the place he knows who he is.

“Will I see you in Lyon?” he asks Freddie.

“Probably. But Tolya, we’re here now. Don't let all this other shit get to you. Win this thing today. And once we win we’ll meet at the bar with another Russian beer and toast your leaders and your land.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” says Anatoly.

*

They shower separately. The water pressure is better than Anatoly expected. By the time he is finished, Freddie is fully dressed and standing by the window, a slim silhouette against the pale morning. 

Freddie looks outside as he says, “I’m mostly pursuing happiness, lately.” 

He lifts his cigarette and inhales. 

Anatoly pauses in tying his tie. “How is that working out for you?”

Freddie turns to face him and exhales on a smile. The smoke dissipates in the air. “Remarkably well, thank you,” he says. “What I mean is, I’m not expecting some great sweeping love of the ages out of this.”

Anatoly finishes with his tie, then steps over and kisses Freddie briefly on the lips. “We know something about how those great love stories end,” he says quietly into the space between them. 

“That we do.” Freddie steps back. He straightens Anatoly’s jacket. “Ready?”

Anatoly looks at him for a clear moment. “Ready,” he says before stepping away. In his head he’s already running a Baltic defense against a D4 opening. He looks back at Freddie as he opens the hotel room door. Freddie is still poised in the window. 

“We’ve got this,” says Anatoly.

“I know,” says Freddie and it’s a promise for now, not the future. Freddie smiles, wide. Anatoly can't recall why he ever found that smile threatening.

“I’ll see you later,” Freddie says. Anatoly doesn’t doubt it. 

***


End file.
